


What He Deserves

by theRougeChevalier



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Homecoming, M/M, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 13:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1606700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theRougeChevalier/pseuds/theRougeChevalier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is coming home from war and Sherlock is anxious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What He Deserves

**Author's Note:**

> One shot, AU, we threw the canon out the window on our way. John and Sherlock don't meet in the normal way and when John goes away to war its hard on everybody, but now he's coming back, but Sherlock wonders will he be whole and will they be ok? Enjoy! 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing. Rights to Sherlock and its characters belong specifically to the BBC.

Sherlock stood there in his best suit wearing the purple shirt that he knew was John’s favorite, hair artfully mussed as always, not a speck of dust or a scratch on him, for once, even though he looked like himself he didn’t feel like himself and it showed. “Stop fidgeting Sherlock, not long now.” Lestrade assured him from his side. Usually Sherlock was known for being the cool, almost icy emotionless consulting detective. No one at the Yard, nor his old school colleagues, or even his family knew him much as anything else. He was written off as eccentric, arrogant, and emotionless by the lot, but those who knew him best knew the truth of it. And the truth was that Sherlock hadn’t really learned how to emote until John Watson came into his life. 

 

John had saved Sherlock, in more ways than one. When they met back in Uni, it was all because a high Sherlock had broken into the lab at St. Barts where John had been studying in his first year of graduate medical school. Sherlock had broken in because he had heard on the street that the morgue there had a particularly interesting corpse, the victim of a rather nasty car accident, although Sherlock suspected foul play and the strange nature of the victim’s injuries made him interesting at the very least, and even high Sherlock’s curiosity still burned bright, a sure sign that it wouldn’t be long before he had to up the dosage he took to reach the peace he sought when he did drugs. 

 

He had been caught out by John who had been in the lab studying hard for his chemistry and pharmacology trials, not his best subjects….

 

John ever brave, threatened Sherlock with bodily harm after finding him with the open freezer and the body pulled out in view. 

 

Sherlock had tried to explain that he was not there to desecrate the body nor was he a necrophiliac as John had accused him of both upon discovering him, but in his drugged state he wasn’t as eloquent in his explanation as he normally would have been. 

 

John for his part being a medical student in his first year was very familiar with junkies and despite his abundance of experience John was still the most caring of human beings and instead of dragging Sherlock by the ear to the nearest police station he simply chastised him and steered him to the cot kept in the upstairs lab closet specifically kept for overworked medical students in need desperate need of a kip. 

 

But as the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force Sherlock Holmes to sleep. So most of the night was spent with Sherlock tutoring John in chemistry equations and prescription drugs, because even high as a kite Sherlock’s genius mind was capable of what to him was rudimentary chemistry. 

 

The next morning even while Sherlock’s high was waning he didn’t find himself craving the next hit instead he found his entire focus trained on the young would be doctor who interested him more than anything had in a very long time. John made him a deal that if he stayed clean he would call him any time an interesting corpse/case popped up. Sherlock promised and for the first time in his life it was one he fully intended to keep. 

 

And he had and John had become his best friend and keeper that quickly. And not long after that his boyfriend. Life as far as Sherlock was concerned was perfect, he had John and John had gotten him a contact with the Yard who wasn’t averse to letting him assist on cases now and again. John loved him and kept him on the straight and narrow, well as best as anyone ever could, they lived together in a humble flat on Baker Street where Sherlock experimented and solved cases while John studied to finish his medical degree and of course assist Sherlock with the more interesting(read: dangerous) cases. But soon, life had caught up with them….or rather the real world caught up with them. 

 

War had come to the international arena once again, unfamiliar circumstances in an all too familiar terrain. John being the caring, brave, and loyal individual he was signed up to do his part right away. The military would pay for his last year of medical school and at expedited pace John would soon be an officer and a medic in her majesty’s army. Sherlock was highly opposed, but John was adamant. Usually Sherlock could convince John to do anything for him, but on this he would not budge, no amount of pouting, acting out, or seduction would sway John from his decision. 

 

Sherlock felt like John was abandoning him and knew the minute he left he would fall back into the downward spiral he had been on when they first met. But John was smarter, not that Sherlock would ever admit it, but he made sure to spend extra time with Sherlock and promised him he would return hale and hearty soon and in the mean time he would be full up to the brim with cases courtesy of Lestrade and Mycroft whom John had enlisted to help keep Sherlock whole while he was away. Sherlock had worked it out and would have been insulted that they thought they could keep it from him accept he knew John always knew he would figure it out, but did it regardless for Sherlock’s well being. He said he wanted to come home to the same Sherlock he left and even threw in the caveat that with him out of the flat Sherlock could do any of the normally gruesome and volatile experiments John did not allow when he was around, provided Hazmat and the ER were on speed dial. 

 

And so begrudingly Sherlock had bid John farewell as he was deployed to the desert to fight an enemy he could not recognize to save men from the enemy of all mankind, death. All in all Sherlock didn’t like the odds, no matter how much Mycroft and Lestrade tried to reassure him about the modern safeguards in place and the statistics showing the unlikelihood of high casualty rates. 

 

18 long months of burying himself in cases to stop his traitorous mind from recognizing the darkness brought into his mind palace due to the absence of his conductor of light. Months of extreme mood swings and almost constant supervision by his brother, Lestrade, and even their landlady Mrs. Hudson. Months of letters, skype dates, and occasional phone calls as his only connection to his best friend, lover, keeper, and soul mate. He could rattle off to anyone who asked the exact number of days minutes and seconds until John returned. Sherlock had never been one to care about the news unless it pertained to a case, but when Mycroft caught him watching the news obsessively in the morning and at night in what was becoming a destructive pattern of behavior just to hear the death tolls of the day, he made sure to have all channels that reports anything like news blocked on the Baker Street television, not that it stopped Sherlock from checking elsewhere but it did make it somewhat more difficult to dwell on in his free time. 

 

John had been injured once, not badly enough to warrant being sent home for good, but the very fact that he had been in a roadside ambush was enough to drive the normally calm Sherlock Holmes into a fit of panic. He knew John could defend himself, but the fact that Sherlock couldn’t be there also to ensure the odds of his survival were always on a positive sliding scale drove the detective to distraction. 

 

If it hadn’t been for an almost immediate phone call from John...well needless to say that was the closest Sherlock ever came to a full on relapse, cigarettes not withholding since no one had been able to get him to successfully stop whilst John was away. 

 

But finally after the long months of trial and separation, today was the day, today John came home… So here he stood, on the tarmac of a landing strip on the army base several miles outside london waiting for John’s return. 

 

Although he normally would have loathed bringing such an entourage he found some comfort in their presence just because his nerves were so frazzled and jumpy. He was accompanied by Mycroft and Lestrade who had “hit it off” whilst in cahoots taking care of him for the last 18 months. Mrs. Hudson, John’s parents, his sister was of course absent, no doubt due to her alcoholism, and a few of his friends from medical school. All were eager for John’s return, but none such as Sherlock, he was a ball of eagerness, anxiety, and impatience, not that anyone not formally acquainted with him would know that by looking at him. 

 

He couldn’t wait to have John, his John, back home, but he was worried that John would have changed, obviously war changes a person in some way, but Sherlock worried that change would be John’s love for him. He knew he wasn’t the easiest man to live with let alone love, and he feared, yes Sherlock feared, that time away had brought John to his senses. And so here he waited surrounded by eager family members and friends equal parts eager and terrified….

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

John sat in the belly of the plane as it taxied down the runway. The jarring of their landing had been a reality check for him, he was really home, ‘jolly old england’. He smiled to himself as he thought about how ironic it was that he had missed the cold and the damp. But he had been at war not on vacation and that tended to make a person thankful for everything they had back home; even the cold and the rain, even his crazy family, but above all else, he had truly missed Sherlock the most. He chuckled to himself as he thought of his genius boyfriend and the circumstances that had brought them together. 

 

Everyone who knew them freely admitted that although they worked well together they also couldn’t be more opposite, and their love story hadn’t exactly been a fairytale in the making. Although they still fought every now and again, usually about body parts left around the flat sometimes about reckless endangerment, that argument went both ways sometimes, but there was never a love like theirs’, never a life like theirs’ and John couldn’t wait to return to it. 

 

A few lazy days spent laying around the flat, just the two of them, maybe re-christening a few of their favorite surfaces, then right back at it running down criminals all over London-town. The guys in his unit all teased him when they revealed their plans to each other for when they were home. They all said, “Poor Watson, going from one war zone to another. Aren’t you tired of this?” 

 

If by ‘this’ they meant sand in every place known to man, enemies they couldn’t recognize, and traps they couldn’t detect then yes he was very tired. But the thought of ‘settling down’ and living what his friends described as ‘the peaceful life’ just wasn’t John’s style. He was a doctor and he liked to help people and he would continue to do so, but his Sherlock helped people too in his own way and for John helping him in whatever small way was just as fulfilling as his work as a surgeon and maybe just a bit more fun. 

 

He was just a bit nervous as the plane slowed and began to turn prepping for its final stop, what if Sherlock had gotten used to being alone again? What if he decided he didn’t need John slowing him down? What if he had given up on him and the work and gone back to the drugs? He shook his head, the last thought was ridiculous he had talked to Sherlock regularly and had received reports from both Lestrade and Mycroft so he knew Sherlock was alright, but what he was thinking was a mystery. Sherlock was not only an expert in deducing others, but also in disguising his true feelings, well to everyone but him, John liked to think. 

 

...But still he had been gone a long time and had only received leave to go home twice in 18 months and even though Sherlock had been happy to see him god only knows what went on in his mind palace the rest of the time. 

 

The plane came to a complete stop and all soldiers aboard stood in earnest anticipation of seeing their loved ones. The cargo door began to descend and John squared his shoulders as the excitement rushed through him, ‘moment of truth.’ 

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

As the plane rolled into view Sherlock froze, all fidgetting ceased, his mouth came to a stop mid snarky observation. He watched with rapt attention as the plane came to a stop and the cargo door lowered. 

 

What followed was chaos as men in desert camo all exited the plane at a steady march and a wave of excitable family members dashed towards them.

 

Sherlock stood rooted to his spot his eyes scanning the crowd frantically looking for that face he knew so well. After a few moments he started to feel the dread that John was not coming back that something had gone wrong. But then he felt a hand on his shoulder and heard Lestrade say, “Hey Sherlock, look…” As he turned towards Greg’s voice his eyes alighted upon the most beautiful sight Sherlock had ever scene. 

 

John was marching towards them, that wonderful quirky smile upon his face that transformed into a full out grin when his eyes met Sherlock’s. 

 

…

 

Composure be damned Sherlock flat out sprinted at full tilt and with his long legs it took 3 and a half strides before he collided with the army doctor, pulling him instantly into a crushing hug. John for his part was so shocked by Sherlock’s actions that their collision caused him to lose his balance and they both went tumbling to the tarmac in an ungainly heap, but even winded flat on his back he had the presence of mind to wrap his arms around the lanky consulting detective. 

 

They held onto each other tightly for a moment before Sherlock moved his face from the crook of John’s neck to bring their lips together. John responded eagerly and they shared a harried desperate kiss that quickly turned into multiple kisses all full of passion, longing, and love. 

 

Sherlock shook with relief struggling to hold himself up and be as close to John as he could at the same time. 

 

John’s hands moved freely taking in every bit of Sherlock they could reach as he fervently returned every kiss with equal fire his mind softly repeating ‘Home’. 

 

Their trance was broken by the sound of raucous cheers in the background, coming from John’s buddies in his unit cheering him on. He smirked slightly into the kiss but didn’t stop and subtly raised both his middle fingers from Sherlock’s back to flip them off. Sherlock smirked back into the kiss feeling and deducing what he was doing. They finally pulled back for breath and managed to sit up although Sherlock refused to leave John’s lap. They allowed their foreheads to rest together as they stared at each other taking in every nuance, breath coming in shallow pants. John stuttered out between heaving breaths, “Missed me?” 

 

Sherlock grinned but rolled his eyes and sighed as though put upon, “Brilliant deduction Watson.” He mumbled. They laughed then breathlessly before kissing again holding each other’s heads close. Finally when they could breathe and contain their laughter although not their grins nor their ardour they could take in someone other than each other. Their friends and family had come close and were gathered around watching the display all just as shocked at Sherlock’s outburst as John was, but that was his lover, drama queen. 

 

“Although everyone is touched by your spectacle perhaps you should get off the ground brother?” Mycroft suggested cooly with a mocking smirk. Sherlock didn’t even spare him a glance, but slowly started to rise to his feet his hands still holding John’s tightly. Now that he was back he wouldn’t be persuaded to let him go for a long while, perhaps never. But John didn’t follow him up. He just sat there on the ground with a gobsmacked grin on his face his thumbs caressing the back of Sherlock’s big hands. Sherlock gazed at him quizzically, perhaps he had injured him with their impact to the tarmac. But then John was motioning Lestrade over. 

 

“John what are you doing?” Sherlock finally asked not used to not knowing anything. 

 

Lestrade stood next to John with a smirk on his face. John held out his hand and Greg pulled something from his pocket and placed it firmly in his hand. 

 

John smiled. “Thanks mate.” He said to Lestrade before turning his full attention and blinding smile back on Sherlock. “I thought as long as I’m already down here. I might as well do this.” He grabbed Sherlock’s left hand and squeezed it and held out his other hand which held a small box. Sherlock’s eyes widened almost comically and his face went blank.

 

“I’m sure you can deduce what this is, but let me finish talking before you make your deduction...for once.” John continued with a chuckle and a bit of an eye roll. Then he took a deep breath before continuing to speak. 

 

“Sherlock, I know I have been away for a long time, but I want you to know that I thought of you every single day I was away. I wanted nothing more than to be here with you;chasing down criminals, listening to your brilliant train of thought, eating take out on the couch after a long case, even arguing over the body parts in the fridge. Hell I couldn’t sleep the first few months over there because there was no violin screeching in the background….” 

 

Quiet chuckles erupted from the surrounding company and Sherlock allowed his mouth to quirk up slightly as well although his eyes still bore down into John’s with bright intent and only John would notice the slight tremor in his hand where he held it. 

 

“And I still want that. I want to spend every minute of everyday with you for the rest of our lives. When you first came into my life you were a whirlwind turning everything upside down, and you still are a whirlwind, but I’d like to think you’re mine and I’m immensely glad for that. You brought excitement into my life, and our time apart has only shown me that I don’t ever want to go back to a world without you in it. Even the chaos and adrenaline pumping danger of the battlefield couldn’t compare to the excitement of my world with you in it.” 

 

“Boring…” John intoned in his best Sherlock impersonation causing more sniggers from their lookers on. 

 

“So if you still feel about me as you did 18 months ago, all I want to know is...will you marry me?” 

 

The world seemed to stop in that moment and all fell silent, a heavy palpable silence. Intermittable to John who didn’t breathe as he waited for Sherlock to speak. Sherlock shook, but his eyes never left John’s and the uncertainty in them had been erased to a content John had not often seen in those brilliant observing eyes. 

 

Sherlock licked his lips and started speaking in that soft way he did when slightly confused the adorable start and stop of uncertainty he rarely showed the world, “As impropable as it seems... John,... I do not feel the same as I did when you left...” 

 

The world hung in suspense the crash soon to follow except….

 

“In fact I love you more.” 

 

John blinked hard and his eyes widened as Sherlock grinned outright happy and playful. “Yes John, if you will have me, I’ll marry you.” 

 

The crash came in a form of cheers and shouts of jubilation from the assembly; friends, colleagues, and even a few strangers joining in at the emotional display they had just witnessed. With his answer John surged from the ground with all the power of a driving storm and pulled Sherlock into his arm and spun around in absolute joy. Sherlock finally lost his returned composure and laughed hard and loud at John’s antics. Only his strong soldier could lift all 6 feet of him clear off the ground as if it took no effort. “I’d be lost without you.” He whispered in John’s ear as they stopped spinning. John stared into Sherlock’s eyes his own feeling a little watery, but Sherlock’s matched his own so their was no shame in it. He kissed him hard on the mouth and then set him down a grin splitting his face and he wasted no time placing the ring upon Sherlock’s finger before pulling him down and kissing him soundly once more for good measure only this time long and passionately. 

The crowd applauded the newly engaged couple, whose grins wouldn’t stopped even as they continued to kiss obvlious to the cat calls and for the first time since they’d been apart they both had startling clarity about what they deserved...to be together.


End file.
